Kylie

So glad you enjoyed it, Tunn! Did you need tissues?

That'll keep you busy for a while! One of my fave movies. Stay safe, Chesil.

I just finished watching the return of The Walking Dead. I should not have watched it while eating dinner. *feels queasy*. Also, . Now I'm watching the first episode of Better Call Saul. Been hanging out for this! Next up will be the newest episode of Girls. Love this show! Monday is an excellent day for new episodes.

My Mum was on hold to someone for ages the other day while he sorted something out. In the meantime she was chatting away to me about random things. Once or twice, after waiting for ages, she said something like 'I bet he's forgotten all about me' and then 'I bet he's fallen asleep'. The next moment her face changed and she started talking to the guy again. It turned out he could hear everything she had said while she was on hold. And when she commented about him falling asleep, he piped up and said that he hadn't fallen asleep. Mum was mortified and I howled with laughter. The guy took it pretty well though. They must have a lot of interesting stories to tell about the things they hear customers say!

Great show, hey Abby? I watched the last ever episode recently. No spoilers, don't worry. Sad to see it end.

Dollhouse, halfway through the first season.

Fun run is definitely an oxymoron for me too. I've never, ever been able to run, and I certainly don't intend to this time either! If I can keep up a moderate pace I'll be very happy (I'd be horrified if I came last!)

I've decided to enter a fun run/walk called the City2Surf later this year. Here's some info: In August every year, Sydney hosts a fun run called the City2Surf. It's an exceptionally popular event, and numbers are capped at around 85,000 people. There are several groups you can race in depending on how serious you are. There are hardcore runners, who leave first (people come from overseas to compete, and the race is televised), then a few other groups, and then the 'back of the pack', which is where the casual joggers and walkers (like me) come into it. It's also quite a dress-up occasion, with people wearing superhero outfits and Star Wars stuff etc. I think a lot of the costumed people are guys who don't even bother finishing; they find a good pub to stop at along the way and then start drinking. The course is 14 km and runs from the Sydney CBD (outside my old workplace) to Bondi Beach. It winds through a few suburbs and up and down hills (including the notorious 'Heartbreak Hill'). I went in it once—in 2009 I think, when I was younger and a lot fitter (although still not very fit by normal standards) than I am now. I remember high-fiving my friend every time we reached another kilometre, so it must have been tough on me (I think I've fortunately blocked out the pain). This means that I need to do a lot of work in the next 6 months to get fit enough to be able to finish it. One of the best things about it is that you can raise money for a charity of your choice if you want to. I didn't do it last time, but I've decided that I want to raise money for brain cancer research (as I lost my dad to it last year). I've signed up and set up a sponsorship page. I've never done anything like this before, and I'm not really expecting to raise much money (this is when being an introvert can suck—if I had more friends I could raise more money!) but any amount will help. So I have a very good incentive to finish the race. I watched Run Lola Run the other day, with the guy (Simon Pegg) who enters a marathon to try and win back his ex, but he finishes hours and hours after everyone else has packed up and gone home. Even if that's what happens to me, I will finish! There's a lovely river walk close to my home that I haven't done for a while. It's a 7 km loop that goes from one road bridge to another. I've walked it several times before, and rode my bike along it a few times as well. I want to start doing that walk a couple of times a week, and then build up to two loops (14 km) shortly before the City2Surf. Actually, in between the 7 and 14 km walks, I could include an extra bit to and from my house, perhaps. To keep things interesting, I'd like to incorporate a few bushwalks as well. I'm fortunate to live relatively close to a lot of bushwalking areas (especially in the Blue Mountains), and there are many walks of varying lengths and difficulty. So if all goes to plan, I'll get fit(ter), lose a bit of weight and raise money for a very worthwhile cause. Something to look forward to! (Or not. I hate exercising. )

I just looked it up and saw that he has been in 9 episodes! I didn't realise there were so many. Here's a link to a wiki about Wheaton's role in the show, and it lists all of the episodes.

Is it a boy jar? Because if it's a boy, it might want to get back at you for putting bows on it. Nice analogy!

I'm afraid it is...but only because you made it that way!

Me too. There's a couple of good bookish words floating around, but unfortunately they never stick in my mind. I should write the words and meanings on cards and study them every day until I learn them by heart.

Aren't you looking forward to it, Claire? I was expecting it to be a huge book but it's quite slim! Maybe I was confusing Claire Tomalin with Hermione Lee (now she writes big biographies!) I had such trouble finding it in the shop. I nearly asked for assistance but I was stubborn and kept searching. I finally found it partly obscured by some other biography of a boofy-looking football player. I made sure to move him to the side so Austen's biography would be more visible. The time spent looking for the book made me miss the comfortable, fast train home, so I had to catch a slower one instead. But it was all worth it!

I bought a few books today, and I read a bit of The Martian. I'm not happy with the amount of reading I've been doing lately, so I decided to start on a short book to get my mojo flowing. I've chosen Black Coffee by Agatha Christie. I didn't realise until I picked it up that it's actually a novelisation by Charles Osborne of Christie's play. It put me off a bit, but it seems OK so far, and Christie's grandson advocates it at the beginning, so...

I'm watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the umpteenth time. I'm sure they play this particular HP movie on TV more often than they do any of the others! Luckily it's one of my faves, especially the whole time-turning sequence near the end.

You're certainly having a great reading year so far, Muggles! What an awesome selection of books! Speaking of Muggles, I'm currently watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Great review, Mona. I haven't watched much Star Trek (although I intend to change that in the future) but I've seen Will Wheaton several times on The Big Bang Theory, and I really like him on that. Does he mention anything about that show in the book? He's also on Goodreads and posts messages there, if you didn't already know.

Thanks for all of the encouraging comments re Rebecca. I'm sometimes wary of such hyped-up books, but I'm really expecting to love this one. So...I made it 5 weeks into the new year before buying books. I guess that's good, but I had hoped to hold out a bit longer. For some reason I started looking at the online site of a Sydney-based bookshop that sells remaindered books, and I found a few that I had to have, so I caught the train into Sydney today and picked up the little darlings to bring to their new home. John Banville Shroud (I have nearly everything Banville has written, but somehow this had escaped me) John Curran (ed.) Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making—More Stories and Secrets from Her Notebooks John Forster The Life of Charles Dickens (this is a large, lavishly illustrated hardback—retails for well over $100 on the Book Depository, but I got it for $40!) Jenny Hartley (ed.) The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens Sarah Kelly The Complete Mosaic Handbook (I'm a sucker for mosaic books) Claire Tomalin Jane Austen I also went to a bookshop that I know sells awesome book badges. I bought one from there last year, which says I'd Rather Be Reading, but I've since lost it (I'm sure it'll turn up one day) and I had wanted to attach it to my book jar along with one that the lovely Kay sent me for Christmas, which says I Love Books (with a heart instead of the word). Well, I couldn't find an exact replacement, so I bought four other badges instead.

I can't wait to see what Tim Burton does with Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. (It's not coming out until 2016, unfortunately , but it's too early to start a 2016 thread!)

Ransom Riggs' third book in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, called Library of Souls (great title!), is coming out on 22 September. I'm so excited! And it's only referred to as the 'third book', not a trilogy like I thought, so it looks like there will be more to come!

Aww. Well at least it can only get better from here, right?

26 Worst Things That Can Happen to a Book Lover (pretty accurate, I'd say!)

Oh dear! At least you're trying though. I could never do that. Do you already know some French? From my school days, I remember a few numbers and how to introduce myself, but that's about it!

Yay! I'm so glad you enjoyed your first Agatha Christie novel! I agree that it gets confusing with the number of characters (it's the same way in other books of hers that I've read), but I also agree that it gets easier as you get further into the book.